Free Midnight Pass: A Lew Fonesca Novel (Lew Fonesca Novels) by Stuart M. Kaminsky Page A

He’s done some very soft time for consumer fraud, and he has not been particularly polite in dealing with women who are, unaccountably, attracted to him.”
    “You met him?”
    “No, just made a few calls to friends in the sheriff’s office.”
    “So?” I asked.
    “She’ll probably stay with Stark until he gets tired of her. Or maybe it’s true love. Truth is, Lewis, I don’t care about the future of Andrew Stark and only dimly about Janice Severtson. It’s the kids. Do what you can, Lew.”
    I nodded.
    Sally looked over at Julio Vegas, who was in animated conversation on the phone in Spanish.
    “I’ll be back with Chinese in a shopping bag,” I said, getting up.
    “I’d kiss you if we weren’t in the equivalent of South Gate Mall,” she said with a tired smile as she touched my hand. “Be careful.”
    “At the China Palace?”
    “In Disneyville.”

5
    I HAD ALREADY PACKED my blue carry-on for a couple of nights and had my Chicago Cubs baseball cap in the front seat of the Nissan Sentra. I look like a big-eared dolt in the cap, but it protects my ever-growing forehead from burning under the Florida sun and even though it was close to seven at night, the sun was still huge and hot in the sky behind me as I headed east on Fruitville for I-75.
    I had delivered the bag of Chinese food to Sally and got twelve egg rolls, three of which sat in a brown sack on the seat next to me. Another one was in my hand. I had also bought four egg rolls for John Gutcheon.
    I drove past Target and the malls on my left and right and headed north on I-75. Traffic wasn’t bad for three reasons. Rush hour was over. It was summer and the snowbirds had left, reducing the population of Sarasota and the entire state of Florida significantly. People who worked were already home and people who didn’t were in their air-conditioned homes or at the beach on the cool white sand ignoring the ultraviolet index.
    I was on my way to Orlando armed with three photographs and wearing a Cubs cap. I listened to a talk-show guy who badgered his callers, made crude jokes, and kept saying he was just using common sense while he got the history of Israel, Iraq, France, and the United States almost completely wrong. I chewed on egg rolls and kept to a few miles over the speed limit.
    There was construction on I-4 from the Tampa interchange to Orlando. I-4 is four lanes, two lanes in each direction, and it always seems there are as many trucks as cars. Still, it only took me a little over two hours to get to International Drive, a street of glitz, restaurants, hotels, a water slide, plenty of places that sell T-shirts and souvenirs, and a Ripley’s Believe It or Not house built at an odd angle, as if it had just been dropped from outer space.
    The hotel wasn’t full, but all they had for me was a room at almost two hundred a night. I didn’t have a credit card, but I had taken all my cash with me. I paid a day in advance and got a receipt I could show Kenneth Severtson. The young woman behind the desk did a great job of ignoring the fact that my luggage was a single blue carry-on.
    When I got to my room, I threw my cap on the table, took the John Lutz novel I was reading out of the carry-on, and went down to the atrium lobby, where I used the house phone to connect me to Andrew Stark’s room. No answer. I asked for his room number. The young woman on the phone said they weren’t permitted to give out room numbers.
    I went down to the lobby. There were plenty of wroughtiron seats at tables and tastefully upholstered chairs scattered around the area. I found a chair in the atrium facing the door to the hotel and sat with my paperback open in my lap.
    Little kids ran screaming in their swimsuits heading for the pool. Families went by speaking German, French, and something I couldn’t place.
    Stark, Janice Severtson, and the kids came in a little after nine-thirty. Stark was carrying the little girl, Sydney, who was sleeping. Kenneth Jr. was walking